DIVORCES DOWN

Fewer and fewer married couples are getting divorced nowadays. Some reports say the U.S. is seeing the lowest number of divorces in almost 40 years. But, some people say marriages are just as unstable as ever.

“Business is still booming,” says marriage and family therapist Karin Krueger. She says there could be a number of reasons behind this drop in divorces. For one, Krueger says people seem to be waiting to get married.

“When people get married so young, let’s say in their late teens or early 20s, they’re still changing so much and the person they are when they’re 19 or 18 is definitely different than who they’ll become when they’re 30,” Krueger says.

– KSL Newsradio (Salt Lake City)

FIVE SECOND RULE

Assistant biology professor Anne Bernhard of Connecticut College and two of her students decided to test the “five second rule,” and see if there was anything to it.

They chose a wet food (apple slices) and a dry food (Skittles candy). They dropped these foods on a well-trod cafeteria floor for varying times from 5 seconds to five minutes. They then put the dropped foods into petri dishes to see if any bacteria grew.

It seems the wet foods remained germ free for at least 30 seconds, and the dry foods were germ-free for up to five minutes. Not only is the “five second rule” true, we could probably change it to a “thirty second rule.”

– Jobsanger blog, citing article in Newsday newspaper.

OLDER THAN EVER

According to a new national study conducted by the Boston Center on Aging and Work, more than 25 percent of American businesses are not prepared for the possibility that millions of baby boomers – some 77 million workers born between 1946 and 1964 – will be eligible to retire in the next 10 years, potentially creating a worker shortage and a gap in experience and knowledge. Organizations could easily be caught off guard by the aging American workforce, especially if they refuse to let go of their insistence on a 40-hour work week.

"Companies that do not plan for this aging workforce may find themselves suddenly with a loss of labor, experience and expertise that will be difficult to offset, given the small pool of new workers and the competition for new talent likely to result from other companies facing the same problem," reports Mick Smyer, co-director of the center which did the study.

– Texas Business Today, quarterly publication of the Texas Workforce Commission.

UNINSURED

Texas, at 23.8 percent, had a higher percentage of uninsured citizens than any other state in 2006, according to the latest numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics. They estimate 43.6 million Americans were without health insurance in 2006, or about 14.6 percent of the population. About 9.3 percent of children (under age 18) were uninsured nationally, compared with 19 percent in Texas.

– Texas Weekly political newsletter.

CAN’T BE DONE

“We’re in unanimous agreement that it can’t be done. They can’t round them up, train them and get them on the line in that amount of time.”

– Jim Dorcy, a board member of the National Association of Retired Border Patrol officers, about plans to hire 6,000 new agents by 2009, in the Houston Chronicle.

WORDS THAT WORK: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT’S WHAT PEOPLE HEAR by Frank Luntz. Pollster and communications expert Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. Available from Hyperion Books.

STATE AND LOCAL TAX BURDENS HIT 25-YEAR HIGH by Curtis S. Dubay. The staff economist at the Tax Foundation in Washington D. C. analyzes the tax burdens in states and localities. Available from the Tax Foundation.

RECONSIDERING INCARCERATION: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR REDUCING CRIME by Don Stemen. Analyst points out that while that increased incarceration rates have some effect on reducing crime, policymakers also should consider that increases in the number of police per capita, a reduction in unemployment and increases in real wage rates and education have all been shown to be associated with lower rates of crime. Available on line at www.vera.org/publication_pdf/379_727.pdf.

Two steps back : city and suburban poverty trends, 1999-2005 by Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone. Brookings Institute study analysis of poverty in cities and suburbs of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas reports that in 1999 large cities and their suburbs had nearly equal numbers of poor individuals, but by 2005 the suburban poor outnumbered their city counterparts by at least 1 million. Available at http://media. brookings.edu/mediaarchive/pubs/metro/ pubs/20061205_citysuburban.pdf.

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